


but i knew you

by bicycool



Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Post-PP2, Some angst, bechloe endgame
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:40:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29074962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bicycool/pseuds/bicycool
Summary: Post-PP2: After talking around their feelings for years, Chloe and Beca find themselves going separate ways after Worlds. A bit of chance and five years later, Chloe and Beca are back in the same city, but not necessarily back in each other's lives.A Chloe-centric fic: let's give this girl some more writing, folks! Endgame Bechloe, because, of COURSE. Set after PP2 because PP3 really did Chloe's character dirty.
Relationships: Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	but i knew you

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go! I'm really excited to be starting a new fic. This is going to really take Chloe's POV—I definitely relate to Beca more and have an easier time writing Beca for that reason, but I'm interested to see where Chloe takes me! 
> 
> Consider this chapter a prologue. We'll get into the main plot of the fic in the next chapter. Here, we see some of Chloe pre-Barden, mixed in (see what I did there?) with some of Chloe's later Barden years.

**The summer before high-school:**

Once, in the summer before Chloe’s freshman year of high school, she found herself sobbing on her front porch. The geometry textbook in her hands was covered in highlighted annotations, eraser shavings, and tears. Still, as a cool wind blew through the trees, Chloe scribbled furiously in her notebook.

Several facts give important context to this scene:

One. Chris Beale, Chloe’s father, believed in perfection with almost as much fervour as he believed in God, the benefits of green beans, and football’s supremacy over baseball.

As an only child, Chloe felt the full weight of this belief. She was indoctrinated into it. A baptism in self-doubt and constantly shifting goal-posts. Yes, her father loved her, but—she thought—he loved her _more_ with straight ‘A’s, perfect manners, and a place on the varsity cross country team.

Two. Try as she did, Chloe could not wrap her head around trigonometry. At her dad’s insistence, Chloe had spent the summer working through math worksheets and watching YouTube videos where old, boring men explained triangles. Numbers had never made sense to Chloe. Not immediately. Not in the way that music did, or that emotions did. Chloe couldn’t _feel_ numbers. Still, what Chloe lacked in natural talent, she tried to make up for in sheer strength of will.

Three. Will cannot stand of its own accord. Will finds itself joined to sense of self, to a certainty of one’s own power, place, and forward motion in the world. Chloe’s will lacked the strength of conviction that comes from certainty.

She was, after all, weeks away from starting high school.

Summers in central Pennsylvania were usually slow and light. That summer, they were weighed down by Chris Beale’s demands for constant, consistent, productive activity.

Frustrated, Chloe set her pencil down. She glanced up at the front garden, down the path to the trees bending gently in the breeze, and out into a dark, featureless night. Her fingers tapped a slow rhythm onto the porch step, making music out of the silence.

* * *

**Barden, year four:**

“So you have your heart set on med school?” Professor Morrison leaned back in her seat, flipping through Chloe’s first paper. 

Chloe had filled in her med-school applications over the summer, conscious all the while that her father was watching her out of the corner of his eye.

“I only mention it because this essay is fantastic,” Professor Morrison flicked through the pages, “it would be a shame to lose someone with this grasp of language to something as dry as medicine.”

“Yeah, I want to be a doctor,” Chloe smiled, “at least, I think.”

Professor Morrison paused, smiling at Chloe in disbelief.

“You think?”

Chloe didn’t know what to say. She couldn’t really see herself as a doctor, if she was being honest with herself. Nor did Chloe see herself as anything else. Having spent years trying to fit herself to her father’s dreams, Chloe wasn’t sure there was very much room for dreams of her own. All she could do was take slow, forced steps closer and closer to a goal she wasn’t sure of. Sometimes, she tried to picture herself handing kids lollipops, but even then, no image came to Chloe’s head.

But it was what her father wanted, and Chloe didn’t know how to do otherwise. Chloe felt everything intensely: every emotion he put into the room, she doubled two-fold within herself. It was like she was a petri-dish for shame and worry.

_“I just want you to have a good, stable life. Something to be proud of.”_

_“Daddy, I–“_

_“We always need doctors.”_

As Chloe’s senior year began, she felt a lead weight slowly wrapping itself around her stomach. She was trapped between a present quickly slipping away from her and a future she could not picture.

If only she could find a way to push off the future.

* * *

**Sophomore year of high-school:**

“Chloe, listen to this,” his laughter floated on the air. When Chloe looked up at him, she was met by the vision of a young man sat on the porch railing, his leg dangling lazily back and forth, tennis shoe kicking against the ground when it made contact. Idle joy. 

She curled her fingers around her notebook, gently closing it, as if too loud a noise would disrupt the night sky. Sitting on the porch had been John’s idea, to begin with. Years ago. Chloe would cry over her school work and John would tell her to sit on the porch. The fresh air, he claimed, was good for the mind. For the body.

(‘For the soul!’)

A soft, absent-minded smile tugged at the corners of John’s lips; soft, loose curls dangled over his eyes; he thumbed slowly through a small book of poetry.

“Are you listening?” he was insistent. His smile had a way of drawing Chloe in that she barely felt, so natural the feeling.

“I’m listening, John,” Chloe placed her book on the step, setting her hands in her lap.

“Okay,” John cleared his throat dramatically, pausing to make sure his dramatics had been well received, “you should make sure to listen to this–“

“John,” Chloe laughed and shook her head, “I said I’m listening,”

_“Learning to love differently is hard,_

_Love with the hands wide open, love_

_With the doors banging on their hinges,_

_The cupboard unlocked, the wind_

_Roaring and whimpering in the rooms_

_Rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds_

_That thwack like rubber bands_

_In an open palm”_

When he finished, John looked down at Chloe, eyebrows raised in anticipation. Every feature on his face lent itself to expression. Not just any expression, either: John’s features melted and warped into shapes that could both entrance and invite ridicule. It screamed earnestness and eagerness; a clear desire to be known and understood by the world around him.

“I believe the word you are looking for is beautiful, Chloe,” John drummed his hands against the railing, “it is totally, completely, wholeheartedly _you_.”

John was, despite his youth, Chloe’s uncle. Seven years her senior; a surprise to the family when he was born, so close in age that Chloe’s friends had always struggled to believe he was her uncle. When she was a young girl, Chloe had imagined that the hospital got it wrong—he was her brother.

In some ways, the names we attach to people don’t matter. Not to them. Not to Chloe. John was both uncle and brother; family and friend. A mentor committed to standing next to her. It helped, of course, that he spent every summer in their guest room, and that he went to college in-state.

It would have been hard for Chloe to believe, in that moment, that years down the line she would go weeks without speaking John’s name. Months… God, who knows how long.

“I should really get back to this, John,” Chloe blushed, turning away from him to return to her work.

“Calculus, Chloe? Someday you’re going to be so far beyond chemistry and calculus and… whatever comes after that, and you’ll look back on this and wish you’d let me read you more poems,” John grumbled. 

He swooped down from the bannister, grabbing Chloe’s textbook from the step.

“John!”

“I am giving you actual lessons, Chloe,” John cackled, beginning a slow jog out onto the lawn, “we’re helping you find yourself!”

Chloe followed him into the dark. She always did. Always chased him barefoot out onto the lawn, running in circles until they had both almost forgotten exactly what they were fighting over. Maybe some high schoolers had stopped playing in the grass years ago, but John had insisted that the second you stop playing, you ‘become old and die bitter’.

As a sophomore in high school, Chloe couldn’t imagine being old.

It is always easier to enter the unknown when you are following a friend.

* * *

 **Barden, Year Five:**

Sometime mid-way through Beca’s sophomore year, she stopped knocking on Chloe’s door when she entered. Chloe knew it was her from the way her footsteps fell on the floor outside; heard Beca coming before Beca even turned the doorhandle.

“It will be weird not living with you,” Beca mumbled.

Chloe felt butterflies stir in her stomach. Beca was lying on Chloe’s bed; Chloe was sat at her desk, struggling against organic chemistry.

(Pretending to struggle against organic chemistry.)

She had thought about it: about the world beyond Barden, the Bellas, and Beca. Try as she did, it felt like staring into darkness; she couldn’t give form to the future, couldn’t imagine a world beyond the one she was living in.

It had always been Chloe’s downfall. For all Chloe’s imagination, she struggled to see a life beyond her current comfort. Discomfort. The unimaginable future was frightening. Petrifying. It put a pit in Chloe’s stomach and glued her feet to the spot.

If Chloe’s will needed support, then Beca had always given it to her. She felt certainty of her conviction in one important regard: she wanted Beca Mitchell in her life. 

“Maybe we’ll live together again someday,” Chloe smiled softly.

Someday. It slipped out quietly and took hold of their imaginations in an instant.

“That would be cool,” Beca’s words were wistful.

Chloe stared at the chemistry notes, willing herself to focus on her mid-term.

Instead, for the first time in Chloe’s life, the contours of ‘someday’ were beginning to take shape. There was nothing concrete, just relief.

Halfway-through the practice sheet, an image popped into Chloe’s head. She saw it so vividly it shocked her.

“We’ll have two dogs,” Chloe chewed on her lip, “and you’ll spoil them.”

Beca propped herself up on her elbows.

“Two dogs? In an apartment?” Beca shook her head, “you’re ridiculous.”

An apartment. As Beca said the words, Chloe saw it, in her head. The idea was still fuzzy around the edges, but Chloe pictured a sun-lit apartment. An apartment she could grow healthy, happy flowers in.

“A guinea pig?”

Beca scoffed at that.

* * *

**Sophomore year of high-school:**

“Someday,” John huffed, hunched over, hands on his knees, “none of this will matter, Chlo. You’ll get out of this house and you’ll get nice and old, and all that will matter is that you’re kinder than the rest of us.”

Even if Chloe could grow old, surely John couldn’t.

“You’re just saying that because you’re out of breath,” Chloe shrugged, placing her hands on her head and gulping in air.

“I mean it,” he glanced up at her, eyebrow raised, “someday everyone will know that you’re bigger than this,” he waved his index finger around.

John had a way of making each moment bigger; of demanding grandiosity from each and every day. He spoke and saw the world as if he were already in his 80s. A young man with an older man’s sense of time and values. Chloe’s father hated it—he said that John was too young to understand that life was boring, that life demanded seriousness and discipline.

(Discipline was Chris Beale’s buzzword.)

“Don’t tell me you don’t dream about it,” John straightened his back, “I see you sitting here, looking out there… You can have your own dreams.”

Chloe frowned at that. She turned, facing the shadows.

John chased from one dream to the next. One summer he was a dog walker, the next he was trying to start a rock band, and this summer he’d decided to become a poet. Some days, Chloe thought his only dream was freedom. To flow freely from one moment to the next. Even in his transience, John seemed certain of each dream.

“I don’t know what I dream about,” she sighed, “I… I’ll be a doctor.”

“You don’t want to be a doctor, Chloe,” John waved Chloe’s textbook in the air.

“Then I don’t know, John! It’s all big and scary… how am I meant to know?”

It confused Chloe, the way other people seemed so sure of their futures. As if in one moment they could know who they would be in the next. Chloe Beale wasn’t even sure who she was then; how could she know herself in two minutes, let alone in four years?

She felt so much, so often. Joy, fear, apprehension. Chloe would hear people say ‘follow your gut’ and wonder which gut she was meant to follow. How was she to know which emotion to chase? Whether to follow joy or fear?

John stopped, all semblance of joke and ridicule disappearing from his face. Expressionless, it was easier to see him as a twenty-two year old.

“Someday you’ll figure it out,” John, held the textbook lazily in front of him, “someday I’ll figure it out, too. Maybe.”

Chloe watched him stare out into the dark and wondered what dreams he saw there.

 _Someday_. It echoed through Chloe. Stuck to her ribs.

She didn’t want his visit to end.

* * *

**Barden, Year Six:**

‘Someday’ became a promise. A dream Chloe and Beca built together. Even when their relationship was hard to articulate, ‘Someday’ was clear. Clearer than it ever had been.

After a bad mid-term or a Bellas performance that went off the rails, Beca would burst into Chloe’s room and fall face-first onto her bed. Sometimes, it was the other way around.

Either way, usually Beca spoke first.

This detail is important for two reasons:

Reason one: It made Chloe feel safe. Being the only one to voice emotions is hard. It left Chloe ashamed and unsure; worried that whatever she was and whoever she would be, she was always going to be too much. Maybe that was why Beca did it: why even when she refused to so much as speak multiple syllables to other people, she broke the silence for Chloe Beale.

Reason two: It made it easier for Chloe to picture the future. She had long since decided that med school simply wasn’t happening—Chloe wasn’t clear what she was going to do instead, but with every ‘someday’, Chloe was more and more certain that she would be doing it with Beca.

“Someday we won’t need science credits,” Beca huffed.

“Science credits?”

“I mean it, Beale,” Beca rolled onto her back, “no test-tubes or breakers,” she pointed to Chloe, “you can keep all of your geeky science books on a secret bookshelf. Not in our room.”

Oh.

_‘Our.’_

A bedroom unfurled in Chloe’s head, moon-lit and with books piled high on bookshelves. She saw, despite herself, Beca lying peacefully in the bed, headphones draped over her ears and the soft glow of a laptop screen illuminating her face.

“Our room?”

Beca blushed.

“I meant… I meant my room.”

Chloe didn’t believe that; she didn’t think Beca believed it either. Jesse be damned, Chloe knew that however silent the feelings between them were, they were there. Most days, Chloe didn’t need those feelings to be defined: most days, definition wouldn’t add anything to their day-to-day lives. Beca held Chloe’s hand either way.

With time, the other Bellas got involved. It was almost a game: ‘Someday, Chloe and Beca will do X, Y, Z.’ Someday they will have a parrot; someday they will have a blue rug; someday they will let Amy visit whenever she wants.

Each ‘Someday’ built Chloe’s vision of her future. What was once dark and blurry became bright and clear.

(John looked to space; Chloe looked to people.)

“A guinea pig? I thought Jesse hated guinea pigs,” Cynthia took a bite of her pancakes.

“So?” Beca shrugged. Chloe tried not to be too happy at Jesse’s expense.

“What if Chloe’s partner is scared of parrots?”

Both Chloe and Beca scrunched their faces at that. They moved ever so slightly away from one another, their elbows no longer gently bumping at the breakfast table.

Partners were never mentioned in ‘someday’ again.

* * *

 **J** **unior year of high-school:**

Growing up, Chloe heard her fair share of Beale brother arguments.

The door slammed loud enough to be heard from Chloe’s room. It always did. She pulled her legs up to her chest, struggling to focus on the equations and diagrams in front of her.

In all honesty, Chloe could not remember exactly how this argument played out. When it came to John and Chris Beale, the arguments all sounded the same eventually. At least, these arguments did. They layered on top of one another, leaving Chloe to remember the most frequent paths.

The argument Chloe could remember went something like this: 

“You can’t expect her to fit your mould, Chris!” John’s voice did not lend itself to yelling. It was too thin; the kind of voice that sounded like it would crumble under the slightest strain. The voice of a young man still finding his way.

Still, John yelled.

“I am her father, John,” Chloe heard her father slam his fist against his desk, “and you are just … just… Lord knows what you are. She needs guidance, actual, _real_ guidance. A path. I don’t expect you to understand–“

“Chloe can have her own path!” John had a way of laughing mid-yell, as if he could not commit fully to his rage, “She is bright, and funny, and kind–“

Chloe had never known how to feel, sat in her room, listening to John yell for her. Kind? Bright? Funny? Chloe was under no illusions: she was popular in school, well-liked by her classmates and teachers. She just didn’t know if anyone but John would have described her in those terms. Maybe her mother…

“Being kind won’t keep a roof over her head, John!” Chris Beale’s voice was far more powerful than his younger brother’s, “Kindness won’t get her through college, or through medical school.”

“ _If_ she wants to go to medical school,” Chloe glanced awkwardly at the chemistry textbook to her side, “Then the world needs kind doctors! Fuck, Chris, it needs kind people. She can be so much more if we just help her–“

“We? You’re not helping, John. You’re fickly, lazy. You’re a hindrance. A distraction! I… I know things aren’t easy for you, I can understand how… how some things are more difficult, but surely you can understand that my way is best.”

It was no secret that Chris Beale did not hold his younger brother in the highest esteem. John had been a mistake—a very visible, very obvious mistake. He had wreaked havoc on Chris Beale Senior, swinging between dreams, jobs, and majors. Chloe had no doubt that her father tried to keep the peace. When John came home with a boyfriend, Chris worked gently on their father until Chris Senior understood. He tried to get John jobs; loaned John money when he inevitably quit them.

The issue was not want of love, but the sheer dearth of difference between the two men. 

Chloe’s father was never seen wearing a shirt without buttons; John once wore sandals to a cousin’s wedding. Chris was tight-lipped and keen to follow the plan; John had come into the world unplanned and lived his life that way.

Which did Chloe want to be?

“You don’t know her, Chris,” John was pleading, “at least I talk to her.”

“You confuse and delude her. You _distract_ her.”

“No, Chris, I listen–“

“She is seventeen! She doesn’t need you to listen to her, John. You’re screwing with her future.”

John went quiet. Chloe closed her textbook, creeping out of her room and to the top of the steps, where she could catch glimpses of the two men through her father’s half-closed door.

“Someday, Chris, you’re going to regret squashing her,” John had given up yelling. His voice was soft, carrying the same tone he used for Chloe, “you’re going to make her cold and heartless and just another person who doesn’t care– She… She should be having these conversations with you, Chris. But she’s too scar–“

“John, this conversation is done.”

“Someday she’ll figure out what she’s really good at, and we’ll regret not letting her get there sooner,” John paced back and forth, waving his hands frantically.

“Enough!”

“You are a good father, Chris, but you’re getting this wrong. You’ve got her wrong. She can play in the garden and get a B in Calculus, and it won’t matter in the slightest, because someday–“

The door slammed shut.

* * *

**Barden, Year Seven:**

By Beca’s final year—Chloe’s final, final year, she _promised_ —‘Someday’ had become ‘next year’. Someday was coming to a day near them, and soon. Not all of it: Chloe reminded Beca that most landlords wouldn’t allow parrots; Beca refused to keep guinea pigs if there was no parrot to ‘keep them in line.’

“New York or Los Angeles,” Beca tossed a stress ball in the air, grimacing as it landed on Chloe’s chest.

The two girls were lying side by side. Chloe was trying not to imagine them doing the same thing next year in their apartment.

(Some futures were becoming easier to picture).

“What if I say Denver?”

“I’m not living with you in Denver, Chloe,” Beca frowned at her. Something in her eye told Chloe that it was a soft ‘no’; that in some universe, Beca could have said yes.

Chloe laughed at that.

“Fine,” she rolled onto her side, putting the ball in Beca’s hand, “New York or Los Angeles.”

“New York,” Beca smiled, “you’d like New York. L.A… It’s not a Chloe Beale city.”

Chloe didn’t have a response; she wasn’t sure what Beca meant. Besides, Beca wasn’t really there. She was, Chloe reasoned, in New York. If not in body then in soul.

As the year wore on, Chloe felt the certain ‘Someday’ slipping away. Beca was never there; always missing. Gone.

“Someday, we won’t need to worry about Stacie’s cooking,” Chloe slipped into Beca’s room.

Beca didn’t respond.

“Next year…” Chloe tried again, but as she said the words, she worried the future they alluded to no longer existed for the two of them.

“Chlo, I’m kind of busy.”

Chloe stepped out and closed the door behind her.

All of the Bellas were making plans for their futures. Their ‘Somedays’. Was Chloe’s future with Beca slipping away? Had she somehow pushed it away? She found herself scrolling through job postings online, visiting career fairs, everything. Anything.

On a whim, Chloe applied to a job in San Francisco. Maybe if she and Beca had been talking, Chloe would have put San Francisco on the table. She would have tried to add it to the possible ‘Somedays’.

Chloe couldn’t see a future in San Francisco; couldn’t see her future with Beca as clearly as she’d seen it before.

* * *

**Senior year of high-school:**

John had moved to Austin. It had been quick. Sudden. Chloe found herself standing at the edge of an uncertain future without a rock to lean on. It gutted her. Chloe sat on the porch, alone, staring down the driveway and trying to imagine the year beyond.

Her only solace was that John wrote to her. He even copied poems for her.

 _“_ _As you began_

_You'll end the year with me._

_We'll hug each other while we can,_

_Work or stray while we must._

_Nothing is, or will ever be,_

_Mine, I suppose. No one can hold a heart,_

_But what we hold in trust_

_We do hold, even apart.”_

There were few things Chloe Beale was sure of, and love was one of them. Chloe knew that. She knew what she could feel; the way it felt when her father held her hand as a young girl; the way she felt now, when her mother obsessed over teaching her every family recipe she could remember.

John’s selection frustrated her. She sat on the porch, in his spot, and furrowed her brow. No one can hold a heart? Did the world not hold Chloe’s? Did she not let everyone hold a small, tiny piece of her? Her father; her mother; her friends; her… John.

Maybe that was why the future was so difficult. Maybe giving herself so wholly to others made knowing herself harder.

When it came time to select a university, Chloe was at a complete loss. She wrote back and forth to John, hoping he would help give her an answer. Part of an answer. Anything to push back against her dad. He wanted her to stay in state.

_Don't sweat it, Chloe. Try to picture yourself there. Try to imagine the people._

_Ask yourself this: Who do you most want to be friends with?_

Chloe leaned back in her seat, staring at the pamphlets in front of her. Though no image came to mind, she found herself pouring over the Barden acceptance package.

When they offered Chloe a scholarship, it was hard for her father to say ‘no’.

* * *

**Three days post-Worlds:**

Chloe didn’t know how to tell her. She had gotten the job in San Francisco. It shouldn’t have been a big deal: Chloe hadn’t decided anything. A job offer, not a decision. Of course, Chloe didn’t have any job offers in New York, or an apartment lined up, or…

All she had was ‘Someday.’

How was she meant to destroy a dream they had built over three years? Dreams are easier to believe in than plans. Dreams feel safer.

Looking back on it, Chloe would wish she’d told Beca sooner. She’d wish they had turned their dreams into plans—that she had pushed Beca before their future was weeks away.

They were still in Copenhagen, about to go out for their last dinner in Europe. The stress had been building in Chloe’s chest since the end of their performance, building and building every time someone mentioned the future.

The night before, Beca had very tipsily sang ‘Empire State of Mind’ while dangling from a street light. She had grabbed Chloe by the hand, pulling Chloe into the moment with her. Head over heels. In the morning, Chloe was guilt-ridden.

“I’m sure they have great Danish food in New York…” Chloe mumbled, rummaging through her suitcase for a pair of heels.

“I…” Beca coughed, “I’m not going with you.”

Chloe stopped, glancing up at Beca. She smiled.

“Beca,” Chloe began putting on her shoes, “I don’t even know the name of the restaurant.” 

“No, I mean,” Beca pulled at the hem of her shirt, “I’m not going with you. To New York.”

Thud.

Beca looked up: Chloe had dropped her shoe.

“I got a job in Los Angeles. Residual Heat has an office there, and… I said yes, I guess.” 

“You…” Chloe furrowed her brow, “that’s great, Bec.”

She’d said ‘yes’? So easily? Without so much as mentioning it to Chloe? Chloe had agonized over applying to a job without telling Beca; did their dream mean less to Beca than it did to her?

_LA… It’s not a Chloe Beale city._

“I didn’t apply… I just got the offer” Beca sighed, “I know we talked about…”

“I got an offer in San Francisco,” Chloe stammered. She stood up tentatively, wiggling her feet in her heels.

Chloe paused.

“I didn’t say I took the job, Becs,” Chloe shook her head, “I’m still not sure I–“

“You should take it,” Beca waved her hand, “you’ll love San Francisco.”

How could she be so sure? How could she expect Chloe to go from New York to San Francisco so quickly? Chloe had never so much as been to California. Did Beca not understand that she was holding Chloe’s heart? Was Chloe meant to leave it behind so quickly?

“So, Danish food?”

* * *

**Two weeks post-Worlds:**

The car engine hummed. They were sat in Beca’s car, take-out warm in Chloe’s lap, just outside of the Bellas house. If Chloe squinted, she could see Stacie and Amy’s silhouettes in the front windows.

“It’s a consultancy with an environmental organization,” Chloe tried to fill the silence, “I’ll get a desk and everything.”

“I never pictured you sitting at a desk,” Beca turned her key, switching the engine off.

It felt like they had been fighting a cold war. Either one of them would bring up their jobs and the other would immediately tense up. Beca was frustrated at Chloe for applying for a job without mentioning it (‘I didn’t apply to LA, Chlo!’); Chloe was frustrated at Beca for accepting the job (‘you knew for weeks…’).

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Chloe’s hand rested on the car-door handle.

“You’re not meant to work at a desk, Chloe. You’re…” Beca shrugged, “it’s… It’s not you.”

It’s not you? Chloe almost laughed. Weeks before, Beca had been telling her that they all needed to find ways to move on from Barden; now, Chloe was too good to work at a desk? What was Chloe meant to do: who did Beca think Chloe was?

“Most people work at desks,” Chloe grit her teeth.

“ _You’re_ not most people,” Beca flinched, “ _you’re_ special.” 

Every time Chloe was so sure Beca didn’t care—every time Chloe thought that maybe Beca really didn’t see what was happening between them—Beca would say something like that. Something that suggested too much feeling. More feeling than friendship is meant to have.

“Would it be different if I was working at a desk in Los Angeles?” Chloe took her hand off of the handle, dropping it in her lap with a ‘thud’.

“Chlo, that isn’t fair.”

“None of it is fair,” Chloe let out a frustrated sigh, “It was meant to be New York.”

“Chlo,” Beca’s shoulders sagged, “we can… we… it can be California.”

What did that even mean? They were sat in a car letting their take-out go cold, and they had spent the last five months refusing to talk to each other about their future. They had been quietly building separate futures. Chloe didn’t know very much about ‘Someday’, but she didn’t think you could re-build it in a day.

Yet Beca seemed so sure of it. Of them.

Of ‘we’.

“Is there a ‘we’, Beca?” Chloe buried her head in her hands. She couldn’t bear to have Beca see her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Beca laughed uncomfortably.

“God, Beca, you’re an awful liar.” Chloe straightened her back. She set her sights on the other girl.

“I’m not lying, I’m–“ Beca’s face was going red. She was flustered.

“You’re honestly going to sit there and tell me that this,” Chloe gestured between the two of them, “ _us_ , isn’t… isn’t _something_ to talk about?”

Beca said nothing. She sat there, keys jingling in her hand, and said nothing.

“There’s a reason we’re both so upset, Becs,” Chloe sighed, “there’s a whole house of our friends in there. I have Aubrey. You have Jesse. Amy. Out of all of them, we wanted New York with each other…“

Still, the other girl sat in silence. Beca was staring at her lap.

“We wanted ‘us’.”

Beca finally looked at her, defeated.

“The food is going cold,” Beca mumbled.

Chloe’s shoulders sagged. Beca opened the car door but didn’t step out.

“Am I really the only one with these feelings?” Chloe whispered.

It felt like Chloe was feeling her way in the dark. Not because Chloe was unsure about Beca’s feelings: she was perfectly sure. Some things were hard for Chloe Beale to understand, but love? Love was clear. Chloe didn’t just feel things for Beca Mitchell; she felt something _between_ them. She saw Beca with Jesse and it tore her up not because her feelings were unrequited, but because she couldn’t understand how Beca could repeatedly act as if she didn’t feel the same way.

The only uncertainty lay not in Chloe, or in the thing between them, but in Beca. Chloe didn’t know if, when it came down to it, Beca would be willing to choose her. To define them.

Beca stepped out of the car.

The door slammed shut.

* * *

**Five years later:**

Chloe stood in an empty apartment. In one hand, she held a newly signed lease agreement. In the other, she held her framed veterinary diploma. 

Her new apartment was small. 'Quaint'—that's what the listing had said. The daylight seeped in through soft curtains; the floorboards were scuffed and uneven; the cupboards were loose; there was no bed.

A new diploma; a new job; a new apartment; a new city.... New York. Five years later, and Chloe felt like she was back where she'd began. It was not the ‘Someday’ Chloe had pictured lying on her bed with Beca. Not the ‘Someday’ she had pictured after that; or the one after that.

“You know,” Aubrey set a box down on the floor, “someday, this place will feel like home."

Chloe chewed at her lip. 

She wasn't sure what 'someday' looked like. 

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE let me know what you think! Hope you enjoyed this first part. I have most of the fic fleshed out, but am open to some suggestions for directions to take and themes to explore.


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